I really can’t believe I have already made it through nearly half of this pregnancy. I think it feels most unreal because we waited so long to tell everyone the good news. But now that we’ve made the announcement, I have a lot to say!!

Overall, I think I am taking to pregnancy really well, but I did feel frustrated and sick during the first trimester. Weeks 5 through 11 were the worst for me. I was fatigued and nauseous most of the time. I didn’t actually throw up ever, so I guess it could have been a lot worse. Exercise was nearly impossible during those first weeks and I’d get a fast heart beat doing nearly any type of physical activity. I spent a lot of time resting.

Now that I am in the second trimester, I am feeling much better — and more hungry!! I am glad that I kept this list of my favorite first trimester items because I may have forgotten what the first few weeks were like. Perhaps these ideas will help your early pregnancy go smoothly…

My First Trimester Favorites:

Prenatal Vitamins – I’ve been taking New Chapter Perfect Prenatal Multivitamin for years now (always hoping to get pregnant!) and I added Nordic Naturals Prenatal DHA once I found out that I finally was pregnant. Both were ok’d by my doctor and neither make me sick (some women have a hard time with vitamins making them nauseous). I spread out taking them over the course of the day with food.

Ovia Pregnancy App – I downloaded a bunch of pregnancy apps to track the little babe’s progress, but the Ovia Pregnancy app has been my favorite. It tells you about your baby each week (with cute little illustrations) and allows you to input and track a lot of info, like your activity level and weight. It also gives you daily tips and articles. Some of the articles are a little vague (they are not doctors!) but I like that this app seems to have WAY less ads than the other apps I’ve tried.

Claussen Dill Pickle Spears – My doctor said I should avoid salty foods and that the cravings were basically in my head… but I just can’t believe that. Some days, a pickle was the only thing I wanted and the only thing that made me feel better. Claussen Dill Pickle Spears were the very best.

Lime Seltzer Water – I’ve always loved seltzer water, but I went through nearly a 2-liter of Schweppes Lemon Lime Seltzer Water every day during the first trimester! I tried doing real lemon and lime wedges for a while, but they really exacerbated my heartburn.

Chimes Ginger Chews – I wasn’t craving any sweets or candy during the first trimester, but these Ginger Chimes Chews (in the Orange flavor) were occasionally a big help with my nausea. They have a very fresh and strong ginger flavor and they are all natural.

Star Trek Voyager – Ok, so you may not share my love for sci-fi, but I definitely recommend having a go-to tv series to watch at those times when you are too tired to move or you decide to stay on the couch on Friday night instead of going out. Bonus points if it contains strong female characters! (I guess a book could work, too. ha!)

Flowy Maxi Dress – I wasn’t showing at all in the first trimester and could mostly wear my normal pants, but I did have some abdominal discomfort and definitely didn’t feel comfortable sucking in my stomach. Sometimes you don’t want to wear restrictive pants, or a clingy, form-fitting maxi dress (like so many pregnancy sites recommend), but this silk dress from J. Crew is perfect. The waist band is elastic and can be worn above the belly. It is loose, comfy, and flattering.

New bras – My boobs grew a cup size pretty fast. I splurged on two new bras from Cosabella. They aren’t cheap, but they are very high quality and comfortable. I also bought this soft bra for lounging and sleeping. This is a lot of info, but my nipples have been so sensitive that it is uncomfortable to go braless basically ever.

So, that is my list… what do you think? What were your favorite things that helped you through your first trimester?

Spring is usually my fashion comfort zone, mostly because of my love for pastels… but I am really digging this fall’s navy fashions. Instead of the NYC all-black-everything style, I think I’m going to do head-to-toe navy this season.

I like to think I am fashionable, but in reality, I have a fairly consistent history of questionable fashion choices. Prime example: This Banana Republic poncho I bought in 2004. I loved this poncho so much that I blogged about it THREE times: here, here, and here. It was basically just a rectangular piece of knit fabric with a hole for your head, but I thought it was cool.

Sadly, after purchasing the beloved poncho, I fell out of love. I think I wore it three times. BUT! I had this brilliant idea! I could make a nice striped pillow cover out of the poncho! So… I moved that poncho across the country with us twice, sure that I would enact my pillow plan soon… very soon…

It only took me nine years! I finally made the pillow cover this week. Sweet. It was super-simple. I used one of my existing store-bought 20-inch pillow covers as a template and basically just folded the knit poncho fabric around the template and created an overlapping envelope closure on the back. Then, I stitched straight lines down the sides with my sewing machine. I reinforced the stitching a bit, trimmed off the excess fabric, then turned the whole thing right side out and stuffed a pillow inside. I think it took me fifteen minutes!

looking forward to… playing the Hero-U adventure game. I was happy to support the game’s Kickstarter campaign. It won’t come out for at least a year, but it looks like a lot of old-school, Sierra-style fun.

running…The Brooklyn Half Marathon on Saturday. We have been looking forward to this race for months. I hope it lives up to all the hype! If nothing else, we will have fun ending it in Coney Island and riding the Cyclone.

looking forward to…The Great GoogaMooga Festival this weekend in Prospect Park. It is a brand new food and music festival. I hope it also lives up to all the hype!

wishing for… Something ridiculous: A Proenza Schouler PS1 Large bag. The price is completely prohibitive and insane, but I can’t stop thinking about these bags! I’ll take any color.

This is over a week late — which makes it totally lame — but I already did all of the exhausting research, so without further ado…

My top fashion picks from the 2012 Academy Awards!

Full confession: I did NOT watch the Awards last Sunday. (Instead Travis and I watched six episodes of White Collar.) Also, I did NOT see a single one of the movies nominated for Best Picture. Not one. The only movies I saw last year were Fast Five, Cowboys Vs. Aliens, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Mission Impossible. Surprisingly, none of those fine films were nominated for Best Picture.

Thankfully, we have E! News to catch up on all the movie gossip and fashion! Overall, I think I liked the gowns from the Golden Globes more, but the unique red and white dresses at the Oscars were quite striking. My favorites:

So, Pantone (the authority on color standards) announced that the color of 2012 is tangerine tango. Tangerine tango is a reddish orange and it is basically my least favorite color. BUT, in an effort to be more adventurous and open-minded, I thought I’d entertain the possibility of maybe growing to like the vibrant hue.

I searched around for a few acceptable uses of tangerine tango in fashion:

Hello. I am back from the wild world of Alt Summit! It was an inspiring, informative, exciting experience… but if I am being 100% honest, it was also exhausting, intimidating, and overwhelming. A lot to absorb in a short amount of time. I am so glad to have gone, but also quite glad to be back home.

Alt Summit is about inspiration, design, and online business advice. I attended quite a few informative sessions, on topics like “The Business of Blogging,” “Growing Your Audience,” and “Blogging Ethics and Etiquette.” Since I’ve attended similar conferences in the past, some of the content felt repetitive to me, but it was a thrill to hear the big names (like Heather from Dooce, Maggie from Mighty Girl, Ben from Pinterest, and Kal from [i]LoveLife) speak about their experiences of growing their sites and businesses.

I LOVED the keynote talk from Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen is the author of The Happiness Project, which I now feel even more compelled to read. Her talk reminded me that to be happy, you have to be honest with yourself about your true interests and passions, and it can be painful to let go of the person that you wish you were.

A few of my favorite quotes from Gretchen Rubin:

“You can only build a happy life on YOUR interests, YOUR nature, and YOUR values.”

“Technology is a good servant, but a bad master.”

“Preserve open space to think. (And don’t feel guilty about it!)”

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

To put it simply, she gave me permission to do the things that I need to do for my own happiness without feeling guilty, because being happier will make me a more productive and helpful person in the world.

As a design conference, Alt offered lots of new ideas. The business cards that many of the attendees bring to exchange are like little works of art.

Some business card trends I observed: foil embossing, deep letterpress printing on very thick stock, DIY embellishments, like washi tape, and square formats.

Since Alt is a conference for people (mostly women) interested in the online worlds of style, photography, design, and fashion, you can probably imagine how fashionable the attendees are. The outfits at Alt really were impressive.

I did not feel quite up to par fashion-wise, but I tried. Here are a few of my outfits:

Yes, I went with the silver dress for the all-white-attire Winter Wonderland party. Thank you all for voting in my poll! (The big, blue bag was a gift from one of the Alt Summit sponsors, Epiphanie Bags. I actually love it!)

My favorite parts of the conference were the mini parties on Friday night. Different sponsors took over suites in the Grand America hotel and put on parties based around fun themes. There was delicious food and drink, party favors, and lots of confetti. I even forced myself to be brave and tried out one of the many photo booths solo.

Although the Alt Summit was a good experience, my favorite part of the entire trip was just getting to explore Salt Lake City. Seeing the mountains and the snow and staying in the lovely Grand America hotel was all very refreshing. I ordered room service, had a bubble bath, read good fiction late into the evening, and basically enjoyed spending some time alone.

I am not going to recap it all in full now, but I loved traveling to Park City to check out the Sundance Film Festival scene. I even got to see one of the films, West of Memphis, which was an excellent, heartbreaking documentary that I highly recommend. Completely unknowingly, I ran into a crazy-cool Banksy mural and I stumbled upon one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, signing books and I picked up The Blind Assassin. On Saturday night, I struck out on my own, in the snow, to go see the Mormon Temple Square. It was impressive and spooky and wonderful. I had a grand adventure in Utah!

This will be my first year attending the Altitude Design Summit in Salt Lake City… and I leave tomorrow morning! I am a little nervous, but basically just trying to get all packed and ready.

The conference is focused on lifestyle and design blogs, so there has been a LOT of talk about what everyone is wearing. A LOT of talk. There are many cute blog posts on the topic, like this one and this one. One woman says she is bringing SIX pairs of shoes. For a three-day conference!! I am a little intimidated. So I need your help….

There is a party on Thursday night themed “Winter Wonderland” and everyone is supposed to wear white. I was planning to just wear a white top and call it good, but I found a casual silver dress on Sunday at a Theory sample sale and now I am torn. What look should I wear to the party?

Either way I’ll be pretty boring and unremarkable, but what do you think…

Picking my favorite Golden Globe fashions is something of an annual tradition of mine. (My picks from last year.) I didn’t even watch the full ceremony this year, but I managed to catch up on the fashion online. It is amazing how fast they get the photos up after the red carpet!

The fact that I am choosing older women as my faves must say something about me… hmmmm… I really appreciate it when the women look fantastic without going the overtly sexy route. I think it is more difficult to pull off an elegant and unique look than it is to just show cleavage. (Michelle Williams also did it adorably.)